Lost and Found
by Sylla Headhunter
Summary: Team Voltron managed to escape from the quintessence just before it corrupted them too much themselves but Lotor is trapped inside with no way out. As the Team sends in the castle of Lions to seal the various rifts that could have very well destroyed every single universe in existence. And so the new Galra Emperor died - or did he?
1. A Painful Awakening

His head felt like a nuclear sun just had exploded behind his eyes and had purposefully blinded him into oblivion. Groaning, he reached up to it and flinched back as the sensation somehow multiplied, leaving him reeling and ready to throw up whatever was left in his stomach.

Did he even have a stomach?

_Nonsense. What am I thinking? Of course I have a stomach, seeing as I am currently regurgitating – well, something out of it._

Scrambling, he tried to pull himself upright, and sank right back again, as the nuclear sun expanded into a whole galaxy behind his eyes. His vision swam and his mouth suddenly felt too dry to even swallow back his own spit.

Where was he? What had happened?

He remembered something – a flash of light, yellow and too bright against his eyes, splotches of purple and blue in between and then … nothing, as if said vision had hit him over the head with an iron club.

The idea wasn't so far off, actually, now that he thought about it, considering his current state.

He blinked – once, twice. The blur in front of his eyes started to finally fade away into some sort of ephemeral glow all around him that illuminated a whole lot of -

"Nothing."  
His own voice scratched like a frozen record in his ears and he almost jumped out of his skin. The headache returned and made him croak like a bullet frog. By all that was holy, he was a wreck! He couldn't even listen to his voice without almost nuking himself in the process, apparently.

He shut his eyes and tried to calm himself by listening to his own stuttering heartbeat even out slightly. The light was just dim enough to not let him see red through his closed eyelids and he actually found himself calming down significantly. Unfortunately, he couldn't say the same about his head, just his state of mind. The sun still managed to burn through his synapses at a constant pace of misery.

"Nothing I can do anything about right now", he murmured to himself, somehow quite liking the fact that he could hear his own voice. It made the whole thing more _real, _as if the headache – or more like the head explosion he was currently going through – wasn't enough to convince him that this place was real. That he was real.

"Something must have fried my braincells real hard to be thinking this." His vocal chords tried to make him sigh but he more or less just heaved a dry cough and felt whatever his stomach had thrown up earlier trickle down his lips. He wiped them in disgust and slowly opened his eyes again, blinking at his fingers. Whatever is was, it didn't look great – in fact, it looked slimy and purplish, with a wicked gleam to it. Worry pinched his heart, _hard._

"Great. I am somewhere I don't recognise, I can't move and I am leaking something that looks an awful lot like poison, apparently." He tried to chuckle but ended up coughing up more of the sickly looking fluid. It tasted like poison as well – or whatever he imagined poison to taste like because how would he be able to know what it actually tasted like?  
_Oh, you know._

His stomach tightened around his aching middle like a coiled rope. There was something he was missing – something vitally important, something lost in the haze that had become his mind, frazzled at the edges like an old carpet too worn to be used any more. Something … something he couldn't recall, no matter how hard he thought about it. It just slipped through his searching fingers, as if it were made of water.

He cursed under his breath and tried something else. Maybe whatever it was would come back eventually – he just had to stop thinking about it constantly and it would pop right back where it belonged. And chase the nuclear warhead away that still rested behind his eyes. For now, he had to focus on something else – something probably equally important.

The question of _Where in the ever loving fuck am I?_

_Utilise your brain. _

He had already tried that – it had resulted in a headache the size of a war ship. This place, as far as he could tell, was just empty. Ethereal light floated everywhere and he floated as well …

He startled.

He didn't float.

As a matter of fact, nothing floated around him – the light rather fell from somewhere far above him. He was not in empty space.

"This is a cave."  
_Genius-brain._

Speaking out loud made his head ring again but the words were comforting somehow – a sign that he was at least conscious enough to be able to talk. His Broca's area at least seemed to be unaffected by the horrendous pain his head was in otherwise – he could effectively rule out a concussion at this point. Wonderful. Although … something was still missing. Again.

He sighed and tried moving again. The nuclear war head imploded and embedded itself further into his brain but he gritted his teeth and snarled through it until his body was finally upright again, his hands clammy with sweat as he pawed feebly around himself. His fingertips brushed over cold stone and he gripped it instinctively, fearing that he would drop down again if he let go or, worst case scenario, didn't get his hands on it at all.

_Deep breaths. Calm yourself._

He panted through his teeth and tried to unclench his cramped jaws, cold air whistling in and out over his tongue coated with a sweet bitterness. Probably the weird purple glowy stuff he had vomited a few doboshes earlier. Or maybe it had already been a varga? Two vargas? He had no idea. The light hadn't changed at least but that was definitely not a good way to measure time. He didn't even know if this place had any sort of solar or even lunar cycle. If it even had a moon or sun. He should have probably called it "Light cycle". The idea made him snort and searing pain shot through his head, making him cry out and suddenly redoubling. Keening, he grabbed on to the smooth surface next to him and tried his hardest not to fall down again.

"No snorting. Or laughing. Or anything." The words just fell out of his mouth, as if he was vomiting them out, and the thought wanted to pry another weak laugh from his equally weak mind. Apparently getting stranded in a glow of light and a cave had made his brain short circuit and his sense of humour die along with whatever braincells he had possessed prior.

He froze as those words formed themselves inside of him.

That.

That was what he had been missing. He had been working on instinct mostly, ever since he woke up in this place, wherever it was, so it had kept on escaping his exhausted mind, but apparently standing upright made some sort of difference while thinking.

He did not only not know where he was or why.

He had no knowledge of getting here – wherever here was. He had no knowledge how he would have reacted, could only deduce his little reactions as time went on.

Because somehow, in a way he _also _couldn't remember, he had forgotten everything about himself as well.

What had been missing hadn't been a piece of information. It had been he himself.

He almost sank to his knees again as it hit him. He didn't even know his _name! _He was just a nobody, as much to himself as to anyone else he might have found here – if there even was any sort of intelligent life force here with him. Another thing he didn't know.

"Breathe", he murmured to himself, his voice ragged. "Breathe. Panic is not helpful in this kind of situation."  
He needed to sort his priorities. A name would not do him any good at this point – names did not heal a throbbing head, they didn't bring food and water to someone stranded in the middle of no where and they most certainly didn't help in getting out of a mysterious hole. Priorities.

"Get out of here."  
He would have to figure out the h_ow _on the way.


	2. Unexpected Encounter

The cave wasn't as big as he had believed at first. In fact, it was rather small. Even more in fact, it was a hole in the ground, slightly big enough for him to be standing in it and not hitting his head against the ceiling. Which wasn't a ceiling but rather open space.

"This is a pitfall, isn't it?" His voice sounded tired and bemused at once, now that he thought about it. Apparently, he was getting on his own nerves with the amount of time he needed to sort through his surroundings. He squinted into the light falling down towards him and waited until his eyes had adjusted to the brightness. It was, in fact, a pitfall, or at least a crater without any sort of ceiling and he was standing smack in the middle of it. The wall behind him had been solid to his grasp because some sort of strange material covered it all the way down to where he could make out a shallow indentation his body had left behind. The wall in front of him, however, seemed to be made of a mixture of clay and sand, barely holding itself together as it was.

As of now, that was his only way out – climbing on a wall that seemed to fall apart with every labored breath he could manage, his hands shaking at the thought of it. Oh, he was already regretting every life choice he must have made to end up in this place.

"No use crying over fallen stars", he reminded himself and wobbled on shaky legs to the monstrosity he was about to climb and probably fall down again multiple times. His hands gripped the soft stone in front of him – and passed right through it.

He cursed under his breath, and tried again. This time, his fingers found a tougher spot he couldn't crumble into wet powder and he began to dig a curved hole in the stone to form a handhold.

Oh, this was going to take a long time …

If he was never going to see clay in his life again, it would still be too soon. His fingertips ached as if he had dipped them into boiling acid and the dark smudges travelled up to his shoulders which were achingly sore. And his nails looked black, their edges torn and splintered, one of them almost missing completely, he noted with disgust. He would have to clean them later – once he got out of this hole he had put himself into at some point in his life. He would have to clean all of himself, he corrected, as red powder got into his nose again, making it itch. He almost sneezed himself off the wall.

"Hold on. Just a bit … longer …"  
He didn't even notice how he panted those words out loud as he finally, finally, thank every being in this universe, dragged himself the last missing inches and collapsed in a tangle of dead limbs and matted hair in the dirt. His eyes closed themselves almost involuntarily. Just a moment of rest … one moment …

He was asleep before he even noticed his breath evening out, the dirt and his itching limbs forgotten, as exhaustion claimed him once again as their own.

A small shadow flitted across his closed eyelids, making him groan. Something was here – something apart from him and the eternal light that no one apparently remembered to shut off from time to time. His thoughts still hazy, swirling with half forgotten dreams and memories, he managed to open his eyes, blinking into a different pair of eyes. More precisely, _one _eye and one black vortex, complete with a reddish scar across it like a burning bridge.

"Uh ..."  
The eye blinked and the small shadow came back. It was, in fact, a stick-like something the eye had been poking him with.

_Eyes do not poke. Wake up, idiot!_

He scrambled to his knees – or rather tried to, failing miserably at the task. Groaning, he sank back and landed on his ass. A sharp pain shot through his spine until it met with his head and ignited his pain anew. His mouth, apparently not under his supervision any more, uttered a string of curse words.

"Impressive."  
The voice was low and gravelly, not much different from his own. Quiet hostility simmered in it like forgotten embers, ready to start a wildfire and he wondered for a moment if he had done something in his sleep. He could not remember. He peeled his watering eyes from the ground, finally taking in more than just one eye.

The person in front of him was smaller than he was, that much he could tell. She – he deduced as much from her curves and the fact that she wore something at least resembling clothes over her breasts, covering her up just a tad more than a man would probably have done it – had green skin flecked with black that he saw way too much of, and ears that looked like a bat's wing, the membrane see-through like a leaf. Her legs and arms were absurdly long, as were her fingers, and her one eye that had been staring at him the whole time – and was still staring at him, he noted absent-mindedly – was big enough to seemingly cover one half of her face. Its white was tinged with red, as if she was fighting some sort of allergy, the iris stark purple against it.

"You done looking?"  
He blinked and tried to compose himself – a rather difficult task when sitting on one's bottom and staring up to an almost naked stranger but he had to make due somehow.

"Yes, actually. Might I ask who you are?"  
She crossed her arms, giving her the look of a praying mantis.  
"Go ahead."  
He waited a few ticks.

She still looked at him with her one eye.

This was not going according to plan.

"You were supposed to answer that."  
"Oh, well, excuse me, where are my manners? Oh, right. Must have left them in my cell." Her words seemed to drip deadly acid. He blinked again.

"This is not a cell."  
It wasn't, was it? He would know …

Actually, he wouldn't. Her appearance had made him, ironically, forget about his amnesia. He sighed and tried getting up once more. She regarded him warily, as he wobbled to his feet and concentrated on not vomiting up his guts and the assumed poison again. Miraculously, it worked.

Oh, yes. This was way better. He could see now that she was in fact very much smaller than him, only reaching up to about his elbow. _She _seemed to realize that as well because he saw her backing up even more, her lips drawn back into a snarl.

"I am not here to hurt you", he tried, the words clumsy. Had he ever tried to reassure someone else?  
She looked even more sceptical.

"Yeah, sure, and I'm a Balmera."  
"You do not resemble a giant beast. More like a tiny one."  
Her cheeks puffed up like a blowfish.  
"Well excuse me Mr. Head-in-the-Clouds, not everyone can be as tall as a mountain. Some of us needed their growth spurt elsewhere. In here for example!" She prodded her own head with a sharp finger. The image alone made his head hurt again.

"Fine, fine." He held up his hand, surrendering. "I apologize. Now, can you tell me where we are here?"  
"No."  
A vein started to twitch on his forehead. His headache worsened again.

"Why not?", he ground out, his voice containing not enough patience to save his life. She snarled, a warning gleam in her eye.

"'Cause I don't know it."  
"Fine."  
"Actually no, it's not but that's another story."  
"It's just an expression!"  
He pressed a hand to his head. Yelling made the pain so much worse. So, so much worse. He tried concentrating on his breathing but something even got in his way of that.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"  
"'Cause you look like shit."  
Her bluntness was not something he appreciated at this particular moment.

"I feel like it, too", he snarled back. "No need to remind me."  
"I don't feel the particular _need _to do that, just a certain _want _if you catch my meaning ..."  
He tried to let his headache drone out her voice. It worked at least partially, her words now slurring themselves together until she seemed to realize what he was doing because her mouth closed abruptly and her hand clenched around her stick. Which wasn't a stick at all, he finally realized, but some sort of metal rod she was brandishing like a weapon.

And currently poking him with.

He growled. "What in the name of universe do you think you're doing?"  
She snarled right back, crashing her sharp teeth together. "I was asking you if there were more of _your kind_, ass hat. How about you answer me?"  
"You haven't answered any of my questions either." He didn't know exactly where that sort of temper was coming from but he was pissed, his anger boiling inside his guts. Or maybe it was the poison again? At this point, he wasn't so sure of anything in his current life situation.

"Yeah, that 'cause your questions are stupid. I don't speak stupid."  
The unexpected retort made him snort in amused surprise, resulting in even more pain flavouring his brain like a spice loving cook his chilli. Her composure slackened just slightly, apparently taken as surprise by his laughter as he was.

"My apologies", he managed to croak, his eyes finally not watering again. "I don't know if there is anyone here besides me and, well, you. Whoever you are."  
Her shoulders relaxed just a bit.

"Fine. I will choose to believe you just this time."  
She eyed him warily for a few ticks.

"And the name's Azul."


	3. The Last of the Juwelians

_Azul … huh?  
_The name was like nothing he had ever heard of. Not that that was anything new to him at this point – he was actually impressed that his consciousness had remembered so many curse words. By the stars, he was glad he could talk at all! He could have just as easily gone mute or maybe worse, he could have forgotten _how _to speak, rendering him incapable of doing anything. The thought alone made him shudder with disgust.

Azuls eye narrowed and he felt his disgust mix with impatience.

"I know you don't like me but is this really necessary?"  
She continued to stare him down and he felt his right eyelid twitch annoyingly rapid.

"Look, we are strangers to each other, are we not? You could at least have some common manners and –"  
She laughed. Well, it was more of a dry cough that reminded him of his own laughter, really, but it was more of a reaction than he had gotten the last time, so there was that.

"Why would anyone bother with common manners, you dimwit? 'sides, I told you my name, isn't that what you wanted all along, Pretty Boy?"  
Pretty Boy? His eyebrows rose.

"You do seem to possess some taste after all."  
She huffed. "Sarcasm is my one and only friend. And since you haven't given me _your _name, I have to resort to name calling. Not that I would care about your name, anyway, but that's just how it is."  
He felt as if she had just hit his head – except he knew it was only a matter of speech. If she had actually hit him, he would not have survived it in his state, judging by the waves of nausea that still plagued him.

"I don't have a name."  
Azul snorted. "Yeah, right, Pretty Boy. You like it when I call you that?"  
"I do not!"  
"Because it reminds you of how absolutely _not _pretty you are in this precise moment?"  
"That is not the point!"  
He managed a deep breath. This woman … pressing his hand to the bridge of his nose, he made another attempt at communicating the essence of his problems.

"I do not remember my name, nor why I am here or how I came to this … place."  
Silence.

Uncharacteristic silence, judging by what he knew about Azul at this point. Her eye had widened slightly. He was about to continue talking – about what he had no idea – when her mouth finally opened again and a low laugh escaped from it. He bristled.

"This is no laughing matter! I am serious here!"  
Azul shook her head, snorting again, but her face remained rigid, somehow, as if she wasn't sure what to do with it.

"So you're telling me that I am sitting right here, in this shit hole, with a Galra and he doesn't remember anything? Just my luck, huh?"

A … what now? The word seemed familiar somehow, as if it was something he had heard a long, long time ago but thinking about it made his head swim in a sea of pain and his eyes watered, as if said ocean needed to get out of him somehow. Azul didn't seem to notice.

"This is some kind of sick joke, right? Huh, are you laughing at me now?!"  
Her voice made his ears ring. A trickle of … something escaped his mouth and the bad taste on his tongue intensified by a thousandfold. The poison again? So it wasn't out of his system yet. Great. Why wasn't he dead then?  
"If you could possibly … turn it down a bit … I would appreciate it immensely", he managed to croak. Azul blinked and something extinguished in her eyes, as if he had doused her with the sea currently growing behind his frontal bone. He found himself feeling oddly ashamed at that. Whatever it was that currently resided in his system, it apparently turned him into a giant sap. He wasn't too fond of that discovery.

"Why should I do anything a Galra appreciates?" Her voice cut through his thoughts like a laser beam and he winced.

"I honestly have no idea, none why you should be doing it nor what a Galra is to you. Or is in general." He took a deep breath and tried to steady himself on his feet. Azuls figure seemed to dissolve in front of his eyes, her edges already blurred enough that he didn't realize she had moved until he felt her metal rod prod against his rips again.

"You gonna die on me or what?", she asked and he tried to imagine that she was concerned about his well being. He failed miserably.

"I am trying not to", he panted through gritted teeth. "I am also trying not to fall down again because I might not get up this time."  
Azuls brow creased.

"Sounds like you should probably get some rest, y'know?", she retorted. He snorted and watched, fascinated, as his world dissolved into coloured stars, his knees buckling under his weight.

_Oh, this is going to … _

His head burned out like an overheated light bulb before he could even finish thinking his last sentence.

His senses exploded in a flurry of light and movement and wrenched a dry cough from his chapped lips, coating his tongue in bittersweet nothingness. He was alive – somehow. He wasn't that uncomfortable, actually. In fact, there was something soft and squishy underneath his head, effectively shielding it from the hard ground and keeping his hair relatively clean and even though his throat felt raw as if he had screamed himself hoarse just a while ago, he didn't feel thirsty.

Interesting.

"You still alive?"  
Something tapped his right shoulder and made him jump slightly, and he creased his brow, accepting the death blow this would deal to his head.

Nothing happened.

_Huh._

Now that was _really _intriguing.

His eyes, somehow not watering again, fell on the slight figure sitting next to him – well, as far away as she was apparently comfortable to sit without jumping away or slitting his throat. Her feet and arms were crossed in front of her, as if she expected him to jump her any second.

"Well?"  
He blinked.

"Apparently?" His own voice sounded weak and rough in his own ears and he winced slightly. Azul threw something in his general direction and managed to hit him squarely in the chest, effectively pressing the air out of his lungs. He wheezed.

"What was that for?!"  
"Generally speaking, water is used for getting us a nice drink", she replied, her voice flat. He blinked again.

"You're giving me water?"  
"I threw water at you", she corrected with a razor-sharp grin.

"And you …"  
"And me gave you a pillow, yes. I didn't want to see your head crack like an overgrown purple raisin, so ..." She shrugged and unfolded her arms to waggle her fingers at him. "See? No purple goo. You're fine. Probably. I'm no doctor, I might add." 

She had given him water, was currently waiting for him to drink from it and she had taken care of him to an extend. His eyes narrowed.

"There is something you want from me, isn't there?"  
Azul snorted. "'sides from you leaving me alone? Not really?"  
He shook his head, careful at first but with more vigour as it didn't explode this time. The consistent headache had receded to a quiet, but determined, rapping inside of his skull but that he could safely ignore.

"You took care of me, to a certain degree. I might be an amnesiac but I am by no means stupid. Tell me what you want, if it is not my death – or at least my disappearance."  
Something flitted through the depth of her eye – something he couldn't quite place, an emotion he was not too familiar with. Her gaze had softened slightly, giving her a gentler look somehow, contrary to her words cutting her tongue almost every time she opened her mouth.

"I want nothing from you, okay? Just leave it at that."  
"But ..."  
Her lips thinned. "Leave it or I'll shove my hand down your throat and let you taste your teeth."  
He left it.

The silence evolved as the rapping inside his head grew even quieter, folding space around them until he had the feeling they were both sitting in some sort of undisturbed bubble, surrounded by nothingness. Her eye had left him, although it still flitted back from time to time to regard him with shrewd intensity. Oh, she did not trust him as far as she could throw him. Which made her staying an even greater mystery, one he wanted to unravel. What was her ulterior motive? Considering that he was apparently part of a race she hated for whatever reason, it could not be a beneficial one for him. But killing him would have been easy, too easy. Maybe she wanted to see him suffer?

"Y'know, you're really starting to make my skin itch", she complained, finally meeting his gaze head-on again. "Can you not?"  
"Can I not what?" He stared back, not daring to blink. She huffed.

"Look, I could have killed you earlier ago, m'kay? Could have blown out your candle for good. I didn't. Which means you get a free pass until you try something funny like killing _me, _for example. We good, shit brain?"  
_Shit brain?_

"Excuse me?" His voice dripped with indignation and her grin appeared again, sharp and full of teeth.

"Shit brain. Y'know, 'cause you can't remember shit. What, you like "Pretty Boy" more or something?"  
He most certainly did but he was not going to tell her _that. _Judging by her smile, she already suspected it or was waiting for exactly that – and he was not going to crack that easily.

"I suppose it's at least consistent", he grumbled instead, and watched with a small, satisfied smile as her own one died out. She snarled at him, but it was a half-hearted one, not even remotely comparable to the one from when she had truly been hostile.

It was strange.

"Okay, fine, how about _Rushar_, Shit Brain? Sound good to you?"  
It sounded _familiar, _that's what it did. He wrinkled his nose. Almost as familiar as "Galra" had done – had he heard it somewhere before? Azul snapped her fingers under his nose, startling him again.

"Oi, Rushar, you listening?"  
"I am listening, you barbarian! Were you trying to hurtle my synapses into open space?", he snapped back, unable to contain his simmering anger at how her action had effectively shattered his though process into nothingness. He had been so close! So close to something …! 

_Ah._

"You are a Juwelian."  
Azuls grin vanished in an instant and she leapt to her feet, scurrying about three feet away from him.

"I thought you didn't remember anything", she growled, her eye an angry red slit. "That's pretty specific and all for a nameless person, you know?"  
"I don't know why I know that", he retorted, blinking frantically. It had worked! Something had come back from wherever his brain was currently residing! Now if he could just remember _more …_

"Maybe whatever happened to me is wearing off? I have no idea, believe me."  
Azul remained standing but she at least lowered her arms a bit, her eye still searching through his face as if she was waiting for something. Anything. Probably any sign that he was about to attack her.

"If you mess with me …!"  
"I swear, I am not. I couldn't make this up to save my life."  
She growled again and plopped down where she had been standing, her shoulders rigid with something he couldn't entirely decipher. Fright? Anger? Maybe both?  
"So … you are a Juwelian?"  
Azul glanced at him again, her eye flickering, until she finally nodded and let her shoulders slump purposefully. He didn't doubt she could still be up and about in an instance, either bringing distance between him and herself or attacking him. It took all his willpower to remain as calm as he did absolutely not feel.

"I am, yeah. The last one, probably."  
"The last one?"  
"Did you turn into a parrot? Yes. The Last One. Uppercase letters on both of 'em. My race died out because yours didn't like us."  
Something settled in his stomach, something achingly hard and sharp, digging into him like a knife in his gut. He knew that story, somehow. Not hers, certainly not, but it resonated in him as if she had hit a great gong, a sad note pouring from it through his veins.

"You really don't have to say anything about that, y'know? Closing your mouth and wallowing in silence is going to make you look so much more intelligent than you truly are."  
He blinked and snapped his mouth shut so hard, his teeth clinked together. She chuckled, the sound someone ragged but truly amused. It felt strange, hearing something like that from her, without the harshness that seemed to surround her in every living moment. It felt strange listening to it, no matter her usual taste in humour, he decided.

"It must be hard", he finally managed. Azul just shrugged.

"Eh. Sometimes. You learn to live with it."  
He wanted to say something else, he realized, not knowing what it would be once it left his mouth. This feeling, strange and overwhelming, was going to cost him his sanity. Azul scratched herself under her chin.

"Look, just shut up about it. The only thing I want is my peace from you people, that's all. I'll kill you if you try to kill me or bring me back there, otherwise … eh, I'm not exactly fine with you, but I won't be in your way. Sound good enough?"  
She had helped him even though his race had led hers to its doom. She made less and less sense and he felt himself wishing back for his headache. At least that feeling had been understandable.

"I do not harbour hostile will towards you."  
Azul grinned, her teeth glinting in the everlasting light around them.

"That's good to hear. For your own health, Rushar."  
"What is that even supposed to mean."  
Her grin split her whole face in half.

"Shit Brain."

Maybe he would have to rethink his promise about not harbouring hostile will towards her.


End file.
